Team Liquid is a professional team, founded in the Netherlands in 2000. Originally a Brood War clan, the team switched to StarCraft II during the SC2 Beta in 2010, and became one of the most successful western teams. On December 6, 2012, it was announced that the team had formed a Dota 2 division.[1]

Team Liquid is also strongly associated with its website, TeamLiquid.net. Launched on May 1, 2001, it has developed through the years into a focal point for StarCraft and Dota 2 coverage, eventually becoming the most-browsed StarCraft-related website in the world, gathering thousands of members (including several professional players) and centralizing news about the global SC2 scene. On August 30, 2012, Teamliquid.net announced expansion into Dota 2 coverage.[2] The website also features a progaming database, the TLPD, as well as a wiki dedicated to Brood War, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, Dota 2, Super Smash Brothers: Melee, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch, Liquipedia.

In 2013 the team established itself as one of the premier North American organizations with this roster, placing highly in events such as the Raidcall D2L, The Defense, The Premier League, and the American Dota League in addition to securing an invite to The International 2013. After a rocky start they fell into the lower half of the bracket by a thin margin, which saw them defeat MUFC and then had one of their defining moments in a stellar performance against LGD.cn, knocking the Chinese behemoth out of the event. A loss to the defending champions Invictus Gaming saw them out in 7-8th place.

After the event the roster changed once more, with ixmike going inactive to focus on ixdl, and Korok leaving for school. qojqva of mousesports and Waytosexy of Dignitas eventually filled the ranks. After a strong start in online leagues and group stages, the team had major stumbles at both Fall LAN events, falling early at both MLG Columbus and DreamHack Winter. By early Winter, the team started to falter in it's online play as well, with the frustration boiling over and being shown by FLUFFNSTUFF on his TL.net blog.[3] The blog resulted in an ultimatum for FLUFF: win as captain, or be removed from the team.[4] The team failed to improve, and Liquid soon parted ways with Fluff.[5] After trialing a few players, including Sneyking, DeMoN was added to the roster to take his place.

Despite some early promise, the team still struggled, falling to EG and North American Rejects in straight sets, and in doing so, failing to qualify for The Summit 1. Shortly after, TL lost to EG in the final stages of the ESL One Frankfurt qualifiers. Due to the teams recent struggles, they were not invited as a direct seed to The International 2014, and instead had to fight through another set of qualifiers. Liquid ended the group stage tied for first, setting up a winners finals against NAR, a team they had yet to ever take a match off. Liquid fell 0-2, setting up a match against ex-Liquid players ixmike and FLUFF on their new team Sneaky Nyx Assassins. After a close game one, Liquid appeared to have captured the momentum and convincingly took game two, advancing them to play NAR in the finals. The finals ended up being much more back and forth than any other set between the teams, but after the delayed final game and Liquid's eventual defeat, they were forced to settle with a Play-In position for TI4.

Following up their disappointing TI 2014 qualifiers, the team continued to experiment with juggling their roles while playing in the Gigabyte Challenge #4. Demon moved to the carry or offlane, with TC moving to support. The team showed some early success against we Try and Relax, but stumbled again when they hit NAR in the semi finals. Liquid capped off the month with a disappointing group stage exit in the HyperX D2L Western Challenge.

In early June, the team did manage a small bright spot, with their second place finish in the second season of the American Dota League, losing to mousesports 1-3 in the finals. The team also shuffled positions slightly again, with BuLba moving to support, and Demon to the offlane. The tournament marked Team Liquid's last official matches before fighting for the wildcard spot in Seattle in a month and a half's time.

Although Liquid earned a trip to Seattle, they still needed four wins to make their way into the main event of the tournament. First up was the favourite CIS Game, coming out of China, and led by Black^. Heavily favoring the picks of Skywrath Mage for BuLba and Tidehunter for DeMoN, Liquid crushed CIS in two straight games, with a combined kill score of 49-12. This would advance them forward to face MVP Phoenix, who had won their series against Virtus.pro on the other side of the bracket. After a close first match in which TL came out on top, Liquid were able to ride the momentum and close out the series in convincing fashion in the second match, qualifying for the main event without losing a game.

At the main event, Liquid stumbled out the of the blocks with another loss to nemesis Na`Vi.US (ex-NAR), but bounced back in a major way with wins over favourites Newbee, EG and DK in Day 1. In Day 2, TL continued to rack up wins, beating Empire and Fnatic, but lost three, to Cloud9, LGD, and most notably, Arrow Gaming, a loss that would haunt them in the next stage. In Day 3, Liquid managed to defeat the previous two TI winners, Invictus Gaming and Alliance, with an additional win over Titan, but also dropped two matches, one to Natus Vincere, and one to Vici Gaming. Liquid only had one game on Day 4, with a win guaranteeing them at least top 6 in the group stage, and top 8 overall. Unfortunately, mousesports went on to defeat them, and Liquid finished in a 4 way tie for 5th spot, but fell to 7th after accounting for the tie-breaking rules.

Their 7th place in group put them up against LGD Gaming in the next round, the team Liquid upset in the previous year. They would face off again in an elimination match, loser walking home with ~$50,000 USD, and the winner guaranteed at least ten times that. This year was different from the previous though, and LGD outclassed Liquid, convincingly taking two straight games, and knocking Liquid out of the tournament in 9th-10th place.

The post-TI shuffle was not kind to Liquid. It was announced DeMoN had departed a couple weeks after the event, quickly followed up by waytosexy. About a week later, Team Tinker appeared, featuring both BuLba and qojqva. Many hoped this was a trial for a new roster for Liquid, but after less than a month, it was revealed that the two had left the Liquid organization. Being the last man standing, TC left Liquid in early October 2014, leaving Liquid without a Dota roster for the first time in two years.

On October 9th, 2015, Team Liquid announced their re-entry into the Dota 2 scene with their signing of 5Jungz.[6] Team Liquid saw their first real test in the European qualifier for The Frankfurt Major 2015, but failed to qualify after being knocked out by The Alliance 1-2 in the lower bracket. Liquid's first LAN event, the Nanyang Dota 2 Championships in Singapore, came about a month later. In the following months, TL continued to attend and do well at premier events, with a 3rd place in World Cyber Arena 2015 and 5-6th place at The Summit 4. Within two months of formation, Team Liquid won Dota 2 Champions League Season 6.[7] They also secured their first LAN win at The Defense Season 5 at the Freaks 4U Gaming offices in Berlin, Germany, where they defeated the Frankfurt Major Champions OG in a best of 5 grand final.[8] With the great success Team Liquid achieved in such a short span of time, things were looking up into the new year of 2016.

Team Liquid's success continued on to The Shanghai Major in March 2016, where the team was able to reach second place, losing to Team Secret in the grand finals. Following their silver medal was another at ESL One Manila, where they lost to Wings Gaming in the finals. Finally taking home a win at a large LAN, Team Liquid won EPICENTER in Moscow over Newbee 3-2. Returning to Manila for The Manila Major, Liquid was again defeated in the Grand Finals, this time by OG. After the two Majors, TL was among the teams that were directly invited to The International 2016.

The 2016-2017 season started off poorly for Team Liquid. In the wake of The International 2016, FATA- left the team to take a break from competitive Dota 2[9] and JeraX joined Team Liquid's rivals OG[10]. They were in turn replaced by OG's own Miracle- and BuLba, who joined on September 16 [11]. However, the new team was unable to find success after the shuffle and failed to qualify for the Boston Major. Following more disappointing results, BuLba became inactive and the team found GH to sub in. With GH as stand-in, Team Liquid won their first LAN event in months at DreamLeague Season 6, in November 2016. GH officially replaced BuLba on the squad on January 2 2017[12]. The improved results continued as the team secured the qualifiers for both the Dota 2 Asia Championships 2017 and StarSeries Season 3, which they went on to win in February 2017.

Despite a disappointing result at DAC 2017, being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by Team Faceless, Team Liquid received an invite to the Kiev Major. They placed 5-8th at the Major, going down to Invictus Gaming, the victors of DAC 2017, in the second round.

After the conclusion of the Kiev Major, it was time to look forward to The International 2017. Only few opportunities remained to secure an invite for the most prestigious event of the year and the culmination of the competitive season. Their first test, would be to secure a spot at the LAN Finals of DreamLeague Season 7, held in Atlanta in July. The team managed to qualify by finishing second in the European Divison behind Team Secret. They also swept the competition in Shanghai at the StarLadder i-League Invitational #2, in May, beating TNC Pro Team 3-2 in the Grand Finals. Finally, Team Liquid successfully defended their EPICENTER title in Moscow as they defeated Evil Geniuses 3-1 in the grand finals after narrowly qualifying for the playoffs and battling through the knockout stages, beating heavyweights Virtus.Pro and LGD.Forever Young in the process[13].

Two LAN wins and one successful qualifier for another LAN meant that Team Liquid would be among the six invited teams to attend The International 2017[14], making this KuroKy's seventh TI. But preparation wasn't done before TI, as Team Liquid still had DreamLeague Season 7 to attend, alongside Team Secret, Vega Squadron, and Planet Odd. Beating Planet Odd 3-2 in the finals, Team Liquid secured their third consecutive LAN win.

Team Liquid would come into The International 2017 as one of the favorites. For the Group Stage, they would be seeded into Group A alongside other favorites such as Evil Geniuses, LGD Gaming, or Team Secret among others. After a strong start to the Group Stage, Liquid found themselves in a neck-and-neck race with LGD Gaming for the top seed of their group, which Team Liquid finally were able to secure with an overall score of 13-3. This meant that they would be allowed to pick their opponent in the Upper Bracket of the Main Event from the 3rd and 4th placed teams from Group B: Virtus.pro or Invictus Gaming. Unwilling to face the aggressive Russian squad, Team Liquid chose iG as their first opponent.

However, the first series of the main event did not go as planned and Team Liquid dropped down to the Lower Bracket after losing 1-2 to iG. To make it to the Grand Finals, they would have to make a run similar to Digital Chaos's run at The International 2016. Their first opponent in the Lower Bracket would be Team Secret, to whom they lost the first game of the series. Team Liquid found themselves one game away from elimination, but not for the last time at this event. Beating out the surprise contender Team Empire, fellow favorites Virtus.pro and LGD Gaming, Team Liquid managed to reach the Lower Bracket final, where they faced another surprise contender in LGD.Forever Young. LFY had managed to nearly sweep Group B, only dropping two games and hadn't dropped a game on the main stage until the Upper Bracket Final against Newbee. LFY quickly proved themselves a formidable opponent and after the first game of the Lower Bracket final, Team Liquid found themselves once again with their backs against the wall. However, they prevailed yet again and turned the series around on the back of MinD_ContRoL's Nature's Prophet. Team Liquid had reached the Grand Final, where Newbee waited. Team Liquid had never dropped a series to Newbee and this time would be no different: Liquid swept the series 3-0 in dominant fashion, claiming their first Dota Major Championship and becoming the seventh winner of The International[15] and over 10 Million USD in prize money.

This would be the first time that a TI Grand Final would end in a 3-0 sweep as well as the first time a team made up of 5 different nationalities would win the Aegis. Newbee's Faith, who was part of the Invictus Gaming roster that won The International 2012, was also denied his second TI win. Liquid's victory also continued the tradition of the TI winner alternating between Chinese and Western teams.

As bearers of the ultimate symbol of victory in the struggle between Radiant and Dire, these names shall forever be inscribed upon the Aegis’ silver plaque: